Cubbies Plot Summary:
This week, anger seemed to be the emotion fueling everyone’s life, with Marnie (Allison Williams) getting angry with her new role in Desi’s (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) life, Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) is angry that she can come off awful, which she always does, and Ray (Alex Karpovsky) is angry with everyone.
In this week’s episode of Girls, Hannah (Lena Dunham) finally does something to make her happy, while everyone else just gets mad. 
While the episode seems like filler, (albeit very good filler), for next week’s episode which is sure to be very scandalous, it is still an achievement in itself to portray almost everyone’s emotions in a very realistic, human way.
The writing this week was on par with the season’s other episodes, which means it was excellent, and the acting was on point as well (in particular that of Allison Williams and Alex Karpovsky who just nailed it this week with their mix of insanity and anger in there own plotlines). However, the only thing that wasn’t great about this episode, was the fact that it as so obviously a filler to just move Hannah’s plotline back to New York and have the amazing Adam Driver add some twists of his own. If the writing had a little more zing to it, this would have been amazing episode, but alas fillers do not work that way. To start, the acting this episode was fantastic, simply perfect as always.
It’s a shame this show isn’t more well known in the award shows for it’s acting, almost everyone on the entire cast should be nominated for an Emmy at least once, but that’s my POV. In particular, the scene-stealers this episode were the always angry Ray and lovesick Marnie. 
While Marnie has not always been a fan favorite, due to the fact that she is always trying to be Miss Perfect, the way she seems to unravel this episode with Desi and show the true cracks in her armor was very impressive. The scene where Desi comes over after breaking up with his girlfriend was especially fun to watch as Williams stretches her acting muscles. Showing confusion, anger, sadness, and happiness all in one take was fantastic. It leads the audience to ask how sound of mind Marnie actually is, but also shows that Williams is capable of real, genuine acting.
On the other side of the coin, Alex Karpovsky (Ray) is always a scene-stealer as he’s hilarious and brings a special brand of crazy to every scene. The scene with him yelling at the cars to stop beeping outside of his house was especially hilarious. While the writing was great the pace took a hit due to the fact Lena Dunham was not the head writer of the episode. Her wit and pacing is essential in the series and the first two episodes of this season will be hard for any writer to match or top. ‘Cubbies’ spent a lot of time setting up the events that should play out for the next couple of episodes, which isn’t a bad thing, and it was great move to finally see Hannah lash out at her pretentious classmates and leave Iowa, for now. Iowa, while refreshing at first, was never the place for Hannah… New York, New York it’s a hell of a town.
All in all, the episode was strong, just like the season as a whole has been for a while. Yes, it was filler, a very evident one at it, but it was still very entertaining and extremely well done. The next episode has a lot of promise, and I hope it lives up to the excitement and hype, but as of now the audience will just have to remain in its cubby until next week.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Girls airs Sunday nights on HBO
all photos courtesy of HBO PR
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Laura Dengrove is the one of youngest members of the Pop-Break staff and is a critic for television/movies of all types on Pop-Break. She’s in her first year at college where she will be studying to obtain her bachelors degree at Rutgers University for Journalism/Public Relations. She was the editor for the Arts and Entertainment section of her school newspaper, runs her own blog (Pop Culture Darling), and interns for Design New Jersey. She also has an in-depth knowledge about all things True Blood and an avid Eric and Sookie shipper.
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